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Latest Global Warming Articles
Reflections on Why This Site is No Longer Being Updated |
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It's a cold, wintry day in December, on the cusp of one of the most anticipated years in the history of the Gregorian calendar. With wholehearted curiosity for what lies ahead, this dramatic turning point has led me to certain timely conclusions which will impact the function of this website.
Simply put, I will no longer continue posting climate change content to this site.
As Hot Globe editor for the last six years, I've read and posted countless stories about climate change. Over the years I've reached certain conclusions. The most fundamental of those is that I believe it's essentially too late to stop it. The only thing that could have prevented the dramatic rise in temperatures we've already seen (causing widespread, catastrophic climate events over the last few years) was a completely united effort on the part of the governments of the world.
Sadly, after decades of negotiation, we're nowhere closer to seeing the kind of meaningful accord necessary to halt the arrival of a 2 degree rise in temperatures which is predicted to bring about runaway climate change -- a point where we will be powerless to stop the total collapse of the world's glaciers and ice shelfs, and the melting of the world's permafrosts, which will further accelerate a rise in global temperatures. In simpler terms, even if every source of pollution was abruptly taken offline today, there is likely still enough carbon in the atmosphere to bring us to the 2 degree threshold.
The fact is, the governments of the world have failed us. It's questionable whether they could have ever done anything for us in the first place, as climate change has always required action from a position of unity, whereas our existing political frameworks must always, by their very nature, act from a position of disunity. In the longterm, the politics of disunity will be seen as a temporary, tragic blip in the history of humanity, however catastrophic it's consequences for those of us living through the transition to the inevitable stage of our evolution known as unity consciousness.
Unity consciousness is inevitable because unity is the foundation of everything, from the very structure of atomic matter to the living, harmonious eco-systems that surround us. It is only the human sphere that has not acknowledged this simple truth; it's the contention of many that we are not doomed to be forever tormented by this disconnect from reality, but instead that we will inevitably evolve to a recognition our presence in the fabric of unity itself.
That doesn't mean the transition to unity consciousness will necessarily be pleasant.
We may have had a chance in the past to choose it peacefully, but like spoiled children, we often learn our lessons the hard way. Climate change will teach us about unity, as societies collapse from famine, water wars engulf various regions and super storms devastate once profitable economies.
Is this dramatic personal conclusion a recipe for despair? Not by a long shot. The fact remains that every solar panel purchased, every organic farm supported, every watershed preserved (and the thousands of other smaller actions persons of conscience take every day) matters. It matters A LOT.
Because every action taken, even if it may be misdirected in its attempts to stop runaway climate change, will inevitably lead to the evolution of a more just, sustainable civilization. The process itself may spark the evolving of unity consciousness on this planet; it is no means a reason for despair.
This has led me to the conclusion that my own personal efforts are better spent elsewhere. Posting more articles to this site isn't going to make much of any impact, but the hours in the day saved may in fact make a difference, as the new company I'm working with will have the ability to reach a wider audience and help me bring about positive changes in a much more dramatic fashion.
If you're still on the fence about climate change, the site will stay online. You can continue to search through the hundreds of articles here -- read about the disinformation campaign that has prevented meaningful action on the part of world leaders, discover the science behind global warming and even find some inspiring stories to motivate you to the kinds of personal actions we all need to make... - get off the fossil fuel grid
- switch to organic foods
- consume less
and above all... find our community, because we're gonna need each other if we're personally going to survive the coming changes.
Your truly,
(former) Hot Globe editor
Peter Harris
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Listen to the People, Not the Polluters |
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Go to Original December 6, 2011 Amy Goodman | Truthdig DURBAN, South Africa—High above the pavement, overlooking Durban’s famous South Beach and the pounding surf of the Indian Ocean, and just blocks from the United Nations Climate Change Conference, where up to 20,000 people gathered, seven activists fought against the wind to unfurl a banner that read “Listen to the People, Not the Polluters.” It was no simple task. Despite the morning sun and blue sky, the wind was ferocious, and the group hanging the banner wasn’t exactly welcome. They were with Greenpeace, hanging off the roof of the Protea Hotel Edward. Inside, executives gathered at the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), an organization that touts itself as “a CEO-led organization of forward-thinking companies that galvanizes the global business community to create a sustainable future for business, society and the environment.” Down at street level, as the police gathered and scores held signs and banners and sang in solidarity with the climbers, Kumi Naidoo lambasted the WBCSD, labeling it one of Greenpeace’s “Dirty Dozen.” Naidoo is no stranger to action on the streets of Durban. While he is now the executive director of Greenpeace International, one of the largest and most visible global environmental organizations, in 1980, at the age of 15, he was one of millions of South Africans fighting against the racist apartheid regime. He was thrown out of high school and eventually had to go underground. He emerged in England, living in exile, and went on to become a Rhodes scholar. Naidoo has long struggled for human rights, against poverty and for action to combat climate change. A colleague and I scrambled up to the roof to film as the seven banner-hanging activists were arrested. South African climber Michael Baillie, one of them, told me: “Our goal here today was to highlight how governments are being unduly influenced by a handful of corporations who are trying to adversely influence the climate negotiations that are happening here in Durban. They are holding the climate hostage.” Later, at the U.N. conference inside the Alfred Luthuli International Conference Center, named after an early president-general of the African National Congress and the first African to win the Nobel Peace Prize, Naidoo told me about that morning’s action: “We are not opposed to the idea of dialogue with corporations, but clearly corporations are not actually moving as fast as we need them to move and, in fact, are actually holding us back. Therefore, we think that calling them out, naming and shaming them, is critically necessary so that people know why these climate talks here are not actually going as fast as we need them to go.” read the rest... |
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Koch Political Group Brags About Bullying GOP Lawmakers Into Denying Climate Science |
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Go to Original December 7, 2011 Marie Diamond | Think Progress In its cover story this week, the National Journal explores a curious phenomenon: while the science supporting climate change has only gotten stronger, the onetime Republican consensus on the issue has fallen apart. The reason, quite simply, is the right-wing polluter Koch Industries and its political front group Americans for Prosperity. As Political Correction notes, just three years ago, Republicans including Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, and Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) all expressed a belief in human-caused climate change. Presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) even supported legislation to reduce carbon pollution. But all of these prominent leaders have since joined the rest of the Republican party “in a sudden and near-unified retreat to silence or denial.” What’s changed for Republican politicians is “the influx into electoral politics of vast sums of money from energy companies and sympathetic interest groups”: Republicans have long had close financial ties to the fossil-fuel industry, of course. Between 1998 and 2010, the oil-and-gas industry gave 75 percent of its $284 million in political contributions to Republicans. [...] Among the most influential of the new breed of so-called super PACs is the tea party group Americans for Prosperity, founded by David and Charles Koch, the principal owners of Koch Industries, a major U.S. oil conglomerate. As Koch Industries has lobbied aggressively against climate-change policy, Americans for Prosperity has spearheaded an all-fronts campaign using advertising, social media, and cross-country events aimed at electing lawmakers who will ensure that the oil industry won’t have to worry about any new regulations.
read the rest...
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Go to Original December 6, 2011 Noam Chomsky | Truthout A task of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, now under way in Durban, South Africa, is to extend earlier policy decisions that were limited in scope and only partially implemented. These decisions trace back to the U.N. Convention of 1992 and the Kyoto Protocol of 1997, which the U.S. refused to join. The Kyoto Protocol’s first commitment period ends in 2012. A fairly general pre-conference mood was captured by a New York Times headline: “Urgent Issues but Low Expectations.” As the delegates meet in Durban, a report on newly updated digests of polls by the Council on Foreign Relations and the Program on International Policy Attitudes reveals that “publics around the world and in the United States say their government should give global warming a higher priority and strongly support multilateral action to address it.” Most U.S. citizens agree, though PIPA clarifies that the percentage “has been declining over the last few years, so that American concern is significantly lower than the global average – 70 percent as compared to 84 percent.” “Americans do not perceive that there is a scientific consensus on the need for urgent action on climate change... A large majority think that they will be personally affected by climate change eventually, but only a minority thinks that they are being affected now, contrary to views in most other countries. Americans tend to underestimate the level of concern among other Americans.” These attitudes aren’t accidental. In 2009 the energy industries, backed by business lobbies, launched major campaigns that cast doubt on the near-unanimous consensus of scientists on the severity of the threat of human-induced global warming. read the rest...
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Barack Obama urged to change US stance at UN climate summit |
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Go to Original November 30, 2011 Suzanne Goldenberg | Guardian Environmental groups and officials warn US will derail progress at Durban by blocking moves toward climate change fund
Environmental groups and elected officials have warned Barack Obama that America was emerging as the spoiler of the UN climate summit in Durban, unless there is a big shift in its negotiating stance. In two separate, but strongly worded rebukes, Obama heard from some of his closest allies that his administration was not living up to his election promises on climate action. Both appeals on Wednesday reflect the frustration among environmental groups that Obama will be more focused on avoiding any potential damage to his re-election prospects, than on moving towards a global climate deal in South Africa. The letter to the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, from the leaders of 16 aid and environmental groups, said American negotiators were blocking progress on key elements of the Durban summit, including the creation of a fund, worth up to $100bn a year, to help poor countries cope with climate change. The organisations, including the Sierra Club, the largest mass-based environmental organisation in the US and the Union of Concerned Scientists, said Obama had generated enormous hope when he was elected in 2008, promising US action on climate change. "Three years later, America risks being viewed not as a global leader on climate change, but as a major obstacle to progress," the letter says. "US positions on two major issues – the mandate for future negotiations and climate finance – threaten to impede in Durban the global co-operation so desperately needed to address the threat of climate change." read the rest..
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5 Things to Know About the Durban Climate Talks |
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Go to Original November 28, 2011 Kate Sheppard | Mother Jones What a difference two years makes. Heading into the 15th Conference of the Parties, the annual United Nations confab on climate change, hopes were high in Copenhagen, Denmark, that world leaders would hash out a new international agreement on how to address rising temperatures. Now, two years later, many of the same questions remain as negotiators arrive in Durban, South Africa, this week. Will the United States and leaders of major developing nations like China and India agree to legally binding emission reduction targets? What will come of the Kyoto Protocol, the current pact that guides climate goals set by industrialized nations? (Excluding, of course, the US.) Where will the promised $100 billion in long-term financing to help the poorest nations deal with climate change come from? All of these questions loom as negotiators meet in Durban from November 28 through December 10. In order to understand what's at stake this year, context of the last few years of negotiations is helpful. Let's recap: Back in 2007, world leaders laid out a path at the climate conference in Indonesia that was expected to lead to a binding agreement two years later in Copenhagen. This was still under the Bush administration, and US negotiators were booed in Bali for resisting; they eventually agreed to that plan. Shortly thereafter, the United States elected Barack Obama, who had pledged to take action on climate change. This is why hopes were so high for Copenhagen. But talks there stalled, to put it nicely. At the 11th hour, Obama swooped in, huddled with a small group of ally countries, and produced a political statement known as the Copenhagen Accord. Rather than an actual plan, it was more of an agreement that countries would make nonbinding commitments to cutting emissions and rallying finances. It was unclear how that document would be brought into the formal United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process that requires the approval of all member countries. A year later, at the 16th-annual meeting in Cancun, Mexico, negotiators made baby steps of progress: They formalized their commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions made by both developed and developing countries made in Copenhagen by adopting it through the UNFCCC process; agreed to create a system for making sure countries are living up to those commitments; and created the Global Climate Fund, which is intended to provide $100 billion in financing to developing countries by 2020. read the rest...
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U.S. Blocks Key Fund in Climate Agreement: Report |
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Go to Original November 24, 2011 The U.S. is refusing to sign a flagship global climate fund as negotiations intensify ahead of the UN climate summit next week, the Financial Times reported on Thursday. It quoted U.S. officials as saying the United States, backed by Saudi Arabia, had still not agreed to adopt a blueprint for the Green Climate Fund. Countries agreed to create the fund last year to channel up to $100 billion a year by 2020 to help developing countries fight climate change and a U.N. committee completed the draft design of the fund at a meeting in South Africa in October. Negotiators from around the world will consider the proposals at a climate summit in Durban from November 28 to December 9, as they try to agree on steps toward a global binding climate deal. Earlier this month, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged governments in rich nations to work around troubled economic times and scale up donations to the fund that he said was at risk of becoming an "empty shell". The U.S. never ratified the ailing Kyoto Protocol, which aims to reduce the risk of greater extremes of weather, rising sea levels and crop failures. Adopted in 1997, it entered into force in 2005 and subjects 37 richer countries to legally binding targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions during its 2008-12 first commitment period. read the rest... |
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More weather disasters ahead, climate experts report |
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Go to Original October 1, 2011 Seth Borenstein | MSNBC Freakish weather disasters — from the sudden October snowstorm in the Northeast U.S. to the record floods in Thailand — are striking more often. And global warming is likely to spawn more similar weather extremes at a huge cost, says a draft summary of an international climate report obtained by The Associated Press. The final draft of the report from a panel of the world's top climate scientists paints a wild future for a world already weary of weather catastrophes costing billions of dollars. The report says costs will rise and perhaps some locations will become "increasingly marginal as places to live." The report from the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will be issued in a few weeks, after a meeting in Uganda. It says there is at least a 2-in-3 probability that climate extremes have already worsened because of man-made greenhouse gases. This marks a change in climate science from focusing on subtle changes in daily average temperatures to concentrating on the harder-to-analyze freak events that grab headlines, cause economic damage and kill people. The most recent bizarre weather extreme, the pre-Halloween snowstorm, is typical of the damage climate scientists warn will occur — but it's not typical of the events they tie to global warming. "The extremes are a really noticeable aspect of climate change," said Jerry Meehl, senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. "I think people realize that the extremes are where we are going to see a lot of the impacts of climate change." read the rest...
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Climate Activism
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Breathing Earth: real-time simulation displays CO2 emissions of every country in the world, as well as birth and death rates. |
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